Why Shazam’s Costume Looked Different In The Trailer, According To The Director

People were excited to get a first look at DC's upcoming Shazam! and most were quite happy with what they got. However, people have noticed that in subsequent images released for the new film, the costume has looked a little different. A fan recently asked director David F. Sandberg about these changes and the director admitted that the costume has continued to go through some post-production changes as they try to get the look perfect. According to Sandberg...

Making suits is hard. Like painting a room you can look at little swatches all day but you won't really see the effect until it's done. The color of the finished suit didn't look quite as expected in some lights (particularly daylight) which is on me since I decided to change fabric very late in prep and there wasn't time for as many tests. I figured we'd just have to tweak it in post. The first image released though unfortunately didn't have any post production done to it.

You can do a lot in post-production these days and that includes just changing what somebody is wearing. The exact shade of red that we see between a few of the different looks at Shazam! changes slightly and, while David F. Sandberg takes the blame for that because he said he changed the suit's material late in the game, it seems that even since the release of the first trailer the suit has gone through some tweaks.

Sandburg said on Reddit that the very first official image released, without any work being done, came out as the first trailer was being cut together. He ended up maybe not changing the costume for the trailer as much as he would have liked for that reason. The costume has continued to go through some changes, though Sandberg admits that he probably isn't done making changes quite yet.

That was right as we were putting the trailer together. I figured since that image was out there perhaps we shouldn't stray too far from it in the trailer. Might be confusing. This image is closer to what I'm going for, but it's all still a work in progress and we'll see where we end up. No images (or the trailer) have the finished bolt effect either (it's not going to be an extreme effect or anything but it's not just a simple glow.)

If you haven't seen the image Sandberg is referring to above, you can check it out below.

While we might see a few more gradual changes between now and April when Shazam! is released, we are unlikely to see changes so great that it will be a drastic shift. Still, it's nice that post-production is an option so that every detail can be fine-tuned in order to make the final product exactly what the director was looking for.